Thunderbird Unseats Evolution In Ubuntu 11.10 283
An anonymous reader writes "Coinciding with the recent release of Mozilla Thunderbird 5 and its 400 performance and stability fixes, Canonical has decided that it's now fit for adoption in Ubuntu — and as of version 11.10, Thunderbird will replace Evolution as the default mail program. You can download the second alpha of Ubuntu 11.10 today and give Thunderbird a whirl."
BFT (Score:3, Insightful)
I've always hated evolution. Thunderbird is much cleaner.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I've always hated evolution. Thunderbird is much cleaner.
Look, can you religious nut-jobs take your "intelligent design" and thunder throwing sky gods elsewhere? Evolution is a well founded scientific...
What? Email programs?
*Ahem* Sorry for the interruption, carry on.
Re:BFT (Score:5, Insightful)
absolutely. I also agree with the commenter below, get rid of empathy and go back to pidgin, and then we'll be a step closer to ubuntu not being crap.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes I agree. And while we're ditching Empathy, can we get Ekiga back for SIP calls that 'just work', or otherwise Jitsi?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:BFT (Score:4, Informative)
That suggests they have some stringent standards, especially considering the number of people who have been using Thunderbird for years without issue.
What really happened is they noticed the number of people who removed evolution and installed thunderbird every time they installed a new version of Ubuntu. Eventually, numbers mean something.
Thunderbird is the best for Linux (Score:2, Insightful)
The only decent mail client on Linux is Thunderbird. Everything else crashes, locks up, and doesn't set up as easy.
I've tried 'em all and every major release, I try them again - same result every time so far: crap.
Re: (Score:2)
what about pine? I know it is old as hell, but I never had problems with it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Everything else crashes,
I use Mutt. It's never crashed for me.
locks up,
I use Mutt. It's never locked up for me.
and doesn't set up as easy.
I use... ah hell, carry on. I would probably crash if I lost my muttrc...
Re:Pidgin (Score:2)
absolutely. I also agree with the commenter below, get rid of empathy and go back to pidgin, and then we'll be a step closer to ubuntu not being crap.
It might well happen.I think the main driver was the integration with Gnome and Ubuntu deferred to the Gnome guys. With Ubuntu moving away from Gnome lately we could see a reverse.
Trouble is, neither Pidgin nor Empathy have progressed very much since Ubuntu put together this comparison:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EmpathyVsPidginUsability [ubuntu.com]
Re: (Score:3)
absolutely. I also agree with the commenter below,
And I agree with the comment that's going to be posted an hour from now, on how everything in Ubuntu is broken now, and unity is just he last straw, and that I'm definitely going to switch to something else soon.
Re:BFT (Score:4, Interesting)
Pidgin has a lot more features than Empathy does, that's for sure, but when GNOME 3 came out I decided to make the switch... and I'm really liking it so far. Aside from not supporting blocking contacts on every protocol that Pidgin does (I think it only supports one or two protocols right now for that), it does just enough for me and it feels easier to use than Pidgin, in addition to having great GNOME 3 integration. As far as Ubuntu goes, they'd be better off using Pidgin, but every other distro, as in the GNOME 3 using ones, are much better off with Empathy in the long run. It's very pleasant to use, even if it is lacking in a few parts.
It's good, but (Score:3)
Agree.
I like Thunderbird because:
-I like to keep the same apps across platforms
-The availability of plugins
-The fact that plugins can be programmed more easily than for Evolution (do they have them? are they done in C?)
Yet at the same time, this continues the general theme of Ubuntu keeping on messing things around and changing them. Pick one thing and stick with it! F-spot -> Shotwell, Pidgin -> Empathy, drop GIMP, drop OpenOffice (from CD), Gnome -> Unity, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, theres always Ubuntu derivatives that keep the good parts and hack out the bad.
Re: (Score:3)
Yea, I fucking hate it when someone bothers to take the time to make my applications start working together rather than all of them fumbling around like the only application in existence and trying to do EVERYTHING you could possibly want themselves.
The unix philosophy of chaining smaller apps together to get a lot more flexibility while still working in confined amounts of memory while still allowing work on large things is a great way to go.
However, realize it or not, the reason all those nice chained com
Re: (Score:3)
This! Why are GNOME's core dependencies so entangled with Evolution components, anyway?
Re:BFT (Score:4, Insightful)
Because, Evolution has been a part of the default GNOME suite for a very long time, so as more functionality was built, developers could assume Evolution was there.
Oops.
Re: (Score:2)
Because, Evolution has been a part of the default GNOME suite for a very long time, so as more functionality was built, developers could assume Evolution was there.
Oops.
KDE is currently going down that path with Nepomuk and the whole semantic-desktop. Those things used to be optional. Then, increasingly, more and more programs wouldn't build without it (i.e. the entire kde-pim suite). This is functionality I don't want, will never use, and now can't get rid of without starting my own fork. Desktop search? To me the concept of "remember where you put stuff" was never that difficult. So I just disable it and call it a day. Though, before this, it was much easier to cu
Software relearning? (Score:2)
Funny, that's what my dad said when I told him about Windows 7. He wants to stick with what he knows (IE 7/8), Excel 03 (even if he doesn't use 0.003 % of it's features and could easily switch to OpenOffice.
I don't think is so much about the OS and software changes but about people. If you teach your dad how to get his software of choice he should be able to have Ubuntu exactly as he wants.
I understand what you mean though. Considering the target market of Ubuntu, most of those users won't go much furthe
Re: (Score:3)
I'm willing to bet that they aren't removing Evolution from Ubuntu but just aren't installing it by default. If you're upgrading an older system, you'll get a newer version of Evolution along with everything else.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm willing to bet that they aren't removing Evolution from Ubuntu but just aren't installing it by default. If you're upgrading an older system, you'll get a newer version of Evolution along with everything else.
Except that, the general concensus for *all* desktop operating systems is that *upgrading* an OS from an old version is stupid, and it is always recommended to re-install the new version after backing up the /home folder.
Well, that is exactly what everybody says in ubuntuforums.org when people bring up problems with stuff breaking after running apt-get dist-upgrade
If you're going to have a function like "dist-upgrade" at all, it should work correctly. That's even more true when you produce a distribution specifically intended for nontechnical users.
Though, consider that Gentoo isn't sectioned off into versions of the distro. To update to the latest version of the distro, update your system as you normally would as part of routine maintainence. There is no format and reinstallation required (though you could do it if you just wanted to waste time). Having to do
Re: (Score:2)
Debian takes 42 years to configure. I need a distro that works out of the box.
Re: (Score:3)
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Debian takes 42 years to configure. I need a distro that works out of the box.
I have to admit, I was quite impressed when I recommended Kubuntu and in one case Xubuntu (for an older system) to a completely non-technical friend of mine. I was prepared to have to spend time helping with installation, configuration, etc. Instead, this person came to me a little later and told me the system is all set up, works great, and hasn't caused any problems. That was very nearly an expensive retail purchase of Windows 7.
When I started using Linux around 1996-1997, I had to calculate mode ti
Re: (Score:3)
Evolution (Score:5, Interesting)
I never liked Evolution. It tried too hard to be Outlook. It was just as convoluted to configure, was buggy as sin and used an enormous amount of screen real estate. Thunderbird has it's issues here also but it's been far better than Evolution for some time now. I'm probably not the target audience anymore though, I've been using webmail for some time and have no intentions of switching back to a client.
Re: (Score:2)
As a longtime Tbird (and Firefox) user... my question for the Mozilla folks is, For Fuck's Sake Why Do You Keep Breaking Plugins??
Tbird 5 broke Lightning. AGAIN. Pain in the ass for those of us who actually like the (gag, yes I know it looks like outlook) idea of keeping our calendar in the same program we keep our email, since then it's Right There when we get an email about something that needs to be noted in the calendar.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Evolution (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The email calender connection is simple -- email is used for invitations. invitations to events are sent via email, and the invited parties can accept, decline and such, also through emails.
But why? Wouldn't a dedicated protocol be better? LIke CalDAV? You need something like this to be able to do things like view people's availability BEFORE sending the invite. How do you do this if you're using the MTA only to pass around invites? The nice thing about a seperate calendar protocol is that it allows you to use whatever email client you want and wahtever calendar you want. You don't have to try to find one program that does everything perfectly they way you like. That always annoyed me in cor
Re: (Score:3)
Because to coordinate meetings via iCal (or exchange), everyone has to be on the same iCal (or exchange) server/cluster. Your iCal server won't connect to my iCal server to tell it about the meetings you want to coordinate. gmail/google apps for your domain allow you to cross boundaries slightly, but only because you're really still on the same 'server'. Your gmail ical server still won't talk to mine.
Using a calendar protocol instead of SMTP allows me to do neato nifty things like check people's availability before sending an invite. If you rely on email to exchange calendar events, then you miss out on a whole lot of calendar functionality.
Or ... You can email specially formatted messages to each other with the meeting information.
I can do both. Apple Mail understands calendar invites and adds them to my iCal. But normally I prefer to use the CalDAV connection to the companies Goggle domain for day to day stuff.
Thunderbird and its relation can't just pop off to the built in OS sendmail method because one of the OSes they favor doesn't have a built in standard API for sending and checking mail that is easily configurable by a desktop user.
Ideally your calendar server would handle all that for you.
. but why reinvent the wheel, you need a gecko engine for lightning anyway,
Should it use the gecko
Re: (Score:2)
Which is ironic, because 'provider for microsoft exchange' can talk to exchange 2010, complete with calendar and addressbook. Evolution is still failing there.
Re: (Score:2)
Have you tried mutt then? Works everywhere with nothing but ssh, and you can customize it or add support for anything you want in a few lines of shell.
And since you're already logged in to the server, procmail with all its power is just nearby. Try to beat that with any GUI client, and especially webmail.
Re: (Score:2)
So you hated something for being relevant. Nice. One post after another of people showing ignorance and bias.
Evolution is a good email client. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Though it has had runs of stability issues - typically caused by poor distribution management. Frankly, I find the Thunderbird interface to absolutely suck. Its a step backwards. Every single Thunderbird user I know, which is considerable (though I pointed them to it), hates the revised interface they tried to shove down the
Re: (Score:2)
I'm curious why you don't just use IMAP with gmail?
Gmail has the dubious honor of being the least shit webmail in the whole history of shitty webmail. But if you're on your desktop machine anyway, why not use a local application which is already wired into the notification system?
Seriously, "cloud stuff" seems to be about making solved problems more convoluted for no gain.
Re: (Score:2)
Google's IMAP support is pretty shitty, AFAIK. At least there is plenty of complainers, and here Alpine kept losing the connection (which didn't happen with my installation of Dovecot on a home server, even when I was remote).
Re: (Score:2)
Im not sure what you mean by "imap support is shitty". It supports IMAP; any awfulness would be caused by an awful email client (ahem, Outlook...).
Re: (Score:2)
And by the fact that IMAP is designed for a classical folder hierarchy which Gmail does not provide. I actually ditched it because I couldn't find a way to use it both via IMAP and via the Web interface that satisfied me.
Re: (Score:3)
Yup, I quit using Thunderbird for two reasons
* My office switched to Exchange ensconced behind a firewall so you could no longer use IMAP
* Thunderbird 3 was downloading all my mail from Google multiple times, and indexing it multiple times, and presenting it in search results multiple times
Re: (Score:3)
You do realize that Tags in the web interface are exposed as folders on the IMAP side ... and they can be nested just like folders ... right?
I've been using gmail for years, I have at least 3 levels deep of folders (Year -> Month -> General or TopicBasedFolder) under the inbox.
I can access them both in my desktop client (Apple Mail, Thunderbird, and Outlook, depending on the OS at the moment).
Re: (Score:3)
I just like the web interface. In mid-90s when I started using email I started with a web interface (shitty, I must admit). I just never got used to using desktop apps for this.
That's like driving a car by running next to it, holding on the steering wheel.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I always found that to use a program to fetch mail to the local machine was odd
...but then you advocate fetching mail to the local machine every time you view a message. If my boss sends me a message with a large embedded image, my email client will download it in the background while I'm doing other things. It's cached locally from then on and I can access it in an instant, even while offline. With webmail, my browser will download it in the foreground whenever I click on that message. It's not cached locally outside the browser, and there's a good chance that next time I open that m
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Unless you're in a Google datacenter, I bet your end-to-end bandwidth has nothing on SATA. And if Gmail is really optimized in that way, then it will start the caching only once I open the site. Contrast with Mail.app which starts when I start my Mac and begins caching as soon as a network interface comes up. I guess I could have Gmail as a startup item, but I bet that's not nearly so common.
I'd also assert that low-bandwidth conditions are more common than high-bandwidth links. I was at a technical confere
Re: (Score:2)
It's a holdover from the days before Gmail - back when Webmail interfaces sucked donkey balls. GMail was the first one to actually be usable, and it's still got some quirks that're annoying and non-customizable.
With a desktop client, you've got much more choice, and with Thunderbird's plugin infrastructure, more ways to customize and change things you don't like.
That said, this day and age... there's no point in using a dedicated desktop client unless you're just really used to it or an absolutely hardcore
Re: (Score:2)
I used to use a desktop mail client, because that was how I got new mail notifications.
(I found using Gmail notification widgets that then sent you to the Gmail web page too clumsy - if there's going to be something running on my computer, it might as well be a fully fledged mail app.)
Nowadays I get my mail pushed to my phone, so I don't need a notification on my computer any more. If I want to type out an email on a computer I just go to the Gmail website. It doesn't need to be open all the time.
Re: (Score:2)
You do realize that you could consider every email server "in the cloud", right? Exchange servers for example store all the data on the server, not on the individual workstation.
Re: (Score:2)
As is every web site, including /.
I am so sick of the "cloud" buzzword as it is completely meaningless.
Re: (Score:2)
Evolution supports skimming data from the OWA interface. That barely counts as "exchange support". Call me when they get MAPI support, otherwise Im better off simply using the web interface.
Re: (Score:3)
Evolution does support MAPI, but Exchange 2010 broke it, and apparently nobody's fixing it.
Re: (Score:2)
Well Thunderbird doesn't even support that much. Also the webmail interface to certain Exchange versions does not have all the functionality if you use a browser other than IE.
And to support you with an example: OWA 2003 only offers search functionality to IE users.
About time (Score:4, Insightful)
I like "close to how I set things up anyway", so that I don't have to fight against stupid defaults all the time. Purge evolution, purge empathy, install thunderbird, install pidgin. Done. That was the appeal of Ubuntu.
Though they've jumped the shark with unity, so ... I'll switch to Debian now I guess.
Re: (Score:2)
That's what I used to do also. I hate Empathy with a passion. More and more though I am using google talk in the web browser since I have a gmail tab open all the time anyway. I also switched to Arch thanks to all this Unity stuff. If they tighten Unity up though I'll give it another try. It's pretty horrible right now though.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Its very likely that the folks working Plasma are not the folks who worked on Kopete nor the folks who work on amaroK, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Dunno, I kinda like the way LXDE is set up now. I do agree that its configuration could be reorganized a bit but it's a great way to go lighter than XFCE without losing too much functionality. Yes, I said it, my hardware needs something lighter than XFCE...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Open Ubuntu Software Center, click on Installed Software on the left side. Selected Evolution, click remove. No dependency issues.
Re: (Score:2)
Download (Score:5, Funny)
You can download the second alpha of Ubuntu 11.10 today and give Thunderbird a whirl.
Wow, you have to download and install an entire OS distribution to try an email client.
Re: (Score:2)
If you wish to see how they are integrating it into the OS, yes. Duh
Re: (Score:3)
If you wish to just try it without seeing how they are integrating it into the OS, no. Duh
https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/thunderbird-stable [launchpad.net]
Re: (Score:2)
You think that's bad? It doesn't even do anything unless you put it ON A COMPUTER!
I am not surprised.... (Score:2)
I just haven't seen any significant innovation Evolution for some time now. I switched to Thunderbird a long time ago and haven't missed Evolution one bit. For one, the extensions support for Thunderbird makes it more appealing not to mention the ability to choose what is and isn't in my mail client. For example, if don't want to do calendaring from Thunderbird I don't add the extension.
Re: (Score:2)
So what you're saying is, Evolution hasn't evolved?
Exchange connectivity? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
http://gitorious.org/lightning-exchange-provider/pages/Home
Re: (Score:2)
How does Thunderbird 5 handle full Exchange connectivity (including Calendaring, Contacts, Tasks, etc)? That is my main reason for sticking with Evolution.
Flaky, but it works.. most of the time :-) Even with 2010
So you're saying it's just like Outlook... cool.
Re: (Score:2)
You can use DavMail to convert Exchange into IMAP/POP/CalDav/LDAP.
Re: (Score:2)
I also rely on davmail + thunderbird after struggling for years with evolution - both MAPI and webdav integration.
It never worked right, regardless of patches tested and protocol used. It corrupted messages, it crashed,it lost messages, calendaring was almost always non-functional save for a brief period before they upgraded Exchange then I lost it again.
DavMail works beautifully, including calendaring using Lightning.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail-conversation-view/ [mozilla.org]
I'm also a big
Addressbook (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm really surprised they're doing this before they fix Thunderbird's Addressbook. How they still have not implemented allowing as many email addresses as you want to add for a person is beyond me.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=118665
Re:Addressbook (Score:4)
And along those lines, I wish they'd decouple message preferences from the address book. For example, I get a sales newsletter from an online computer parts retailer we all know and love, and the only way to tell Thunderbird to always display the images from that sender is to add them to my address book and set an option there. Why, oh why? Thunderbird already uses SQLite for other stuff, so why can't it have a table like showimages (address varchar, show boolean) instead of making me litter my contact database?
Setup Wizard (Score:2, Interesting)
And they STILL haven't fixed the setup wizard. I've said the same thing with every release since thunderbird 3: the setup process needs a way to completely BYPASS the wizard, BEFORE the wizard starts spinning out of control. Not after, not during, but BEFORE.
It's not rocket science. The very first thing you do, before committing any changes, is prompt the user: "Would you like to use the account setup wizard, or would you like to setup your account manually?" For christ's sake, it's going to take all of 5 m
Finally (Score:2)
I've been using Thunderbird forever, and have been hating Ubuntu's insistent pushing of Evolution as long. It can be disabled, but its backend is integrated with the gnome panel and calendar, which is impossible to connect with Thunderbird. Worse, Evolution is inferior where features, addons as well as IMAP are concerned (I haven't tested Evolution's POP). Synchronization takes forever, the folder structure is rigid and clashes with that of Googlemail, and the interface periodically freezes when displaying
Evolution Dependencies (Score:3)
Exchange support (Score:2)
Is Thunderbird able to work well with Exchange yet?
Re: (Score:2)
Why foist applications onto people? (Score:2)
I know the big thing about Ubuntu is that it is ready to go out of the box (so to speak), but people are always complaining about the default programs. And if you changed them to what the complainers wanted, other people would complain about the changes.
So why not give "advanced users" the option to install just the programs they want so that they can add in what they want later without a mess of orphaned packages. They don't even have to be sophisticated about it. Deselecting "Internet Applications" the
Finally (Score:2)
Cross platform helps. (Score:3)
I have yet to see a windows version of Evolution. I keep hearing about one but so far I have not seen one. Thunderbird works on Windows and Linux so it is a better choice for people that have to use both systems.
Re:Cross platform helps. (Score:4, Funny)
It's been around for a while: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/ [microsoft.com]
Anachronistic much? (Score:3)
Apple is working on multiple-device cloud services and bringing the app-supplants-web model to every form factor. Microsoft is working on new mobile platforms and the multitouch desktop.
Meanwhile, Linux continues to be embroiled in the devastatingly interesting GNOME vs. KDE and POP email client wars.
1999 called. They want their story back.
Re:Anachronistic much? (Score:5, Informative)
And Apple has finally introduced downloadable apps to its core OS, like Debian's had since 1999 via apt. But we're still waiting for delta updates to those apps, like Fedora has supported for years via delta RPM.
Plenty of anachronisms to go around.
Re: (Score:3)
Let's face it: this is about GNOME/KDE, not Linux the kernel. Linux the kernel has won already. It's not the year of "Linux on the Desktop", it's the year of Linux on the Android/Tivo/VirginAmerica/the list goes on...
Linux the kernel is no longer relevant to this discussion. FWIW, Apple's Mach kernel is just as good as Linux. The discussions are about GNOME/KDE vs. Mac OS/iOs vs. Windows.
The backend is just catching up to Debian/yum, but the front end is way ahead. Once there is parity between the Linux bac
Finally... (Score:2)
Thunderbird quite painful (Score:2)
When I switched computers a few years ago I had to change email clients and switched to Thunderbird. Configuration was excruciating. Mercifully I've blocked out the details but one thing I remember is that Thunderbird WOULD NOT let me just enter the configuration... I could enter the server and then it had to guess at what the rest of the parameters were, and I had to stop the process at the right moment, or else I was screwed. I spent a ton of time crawling thru the settings and there didn't seem to be a
Re: (Score:2)
Configuration became trivial for most servers in Thunderbird 3,
where it gussed or tried various parameters automatically.
Re: (Score:2)
The "guessing & trying" WAS the problem. And it wasn't just me who ran into the problem, I've seen posts from others complaining about the same issue.
When I tried to configure Thunderbird I could see it guessing at POP & SMTP server names that were clearly wrong, and when it had finished, there was no way for me to enter the correct names. As I recall, I had to interrupt the process as the right moment and then it was possible to enter server configuration, but if I let it complete, I was screwed.
Used to like thunderbird .. (Score:2)
This decision is NOT final (Score:2)
Peeve (Score:2)
I'll consider it fit as soon as I an drag an attachment to the desktop. It's been a bug for four years and counting now.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The best luck I've had in Thunderbird is to use the 'Exchange Provider for Lightning' add-on to support an Exchange calendar, and then hoping like hell the Exchange server has the IMAP service running for mail. But that's about it.
Re: (Score:2)